MONTREAL - La Pirogue is not for the faint of heart. The latest from Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Touré is a tough, in-your-face chronicle of a deadly boat trip from Senegal to the Canary Islands.

It’s far from a perfect film. Touré does a great job of bringing us right inside a reality that couldn’t be more foreign to most of us, and that’s exactly his point — to make us feel the despair felt by young men in Senegal that has them willing to risk everything to make the dangerous trip over the water to Europe.

But the message would have been even more powerful if Touré had spent as much time developing a coherent narrative and believable characters as he did researching these high-risk boat trips.

The main man here, and the only one vaguely resembling a fully drawn character, is Baye Laye (Souleymane Seye Ndiaye), a seasoned fisherman who is initially quite reluctant to take command of this pirogue, the flat-bottomed fishing boat meant to take them across to Europe. But motormouth salesman Lansana (Laity Fall) finally persuades him to become captain and, with 30 men in tow, they head into the open seas.

Predictably things go south quickly. Ferocious storms rock the boat and conflicts arise on-board, notably due to the eclectic ethnic backgrounds of the folks along for the ride. There is more ill will generated when they learn that a woman (Mame Astou Diallo) has smuggled herself on board.

But that’s nothing compared to what happens when a mega-storm knocks out the boat’s engine and leaves them drifting aimlessly.

It remains a riveting drama even if it unfolds just exactly how you expect it to, and Seye Ndiaye is very good as Baye Laye, a complex, thoughtful guy who’s reluctantly drawn into this tragic misadventure. But none of the other actors are nearly as memorable for the simple reason that the screenplay by Eric Névé and David Bouchet (based on an original story by Abasse Ndione) gives them so little to work with.

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